Who drove nurse to commit suicide?

An official inquiry in London has vowed to leave no stone unturned in investigating all the circumstances of the suicide of nurse Jacintha Saldanha, the 46-year-old mother of two.

What unbearable pressure was placed on Mrs Saldanha after she unwittingly transferred a prank call from a Sydney radio station to the ward where Mrs Kate Windsor was being treated for morning sickness?

Step forward the faceless cretins on the staff of Buckingham Palace.

These bludging royal retainers, mortified by the worldwide headlines about Mrs Windsor’s condition, demanded retribution.

A series of phone calls was made to Lord Glenarthur, governor of the trustees of the King Edward VII Hospital in Marylebone, demanding he make “an example” of the breach in royal security.

Glenarthur, an old Etonian, former cavalry officer and a junior minister in Margaret Thatcher’s Government, went on the rampage to find the culprit, any culprit, to satisfy the Palace.

They descended on Mrs Saldanha, an Indian-born UK citizen, and created a patsy.

Her brother, Naveen, said she had “died of shame” while London Daily Mirror journalist Alison Phillips wrote: “I find it impossible to believe the hoax phone call was the only factor which pushed Mrs Saldanha to such a desperate act.”

If the inquiry isn’t an Establishment whitewash, some light should be thrown on the exaggerated role of Buckingham Palace and the 4th Baron Glenarthur.

The first crucial piece of evidence is Mrs Saldanha’s suicide note. Will they release it?

UGLY OZ WITCHHUNT

In case you’ve missed it, The Australian’s senior Canberra journalist Christian Kerr, a former Liberal staffer, is waging a virulent campaign against Sydney University’s Centre for Peace and Conflict and its director, associate professor Jake Kelly.

Day after day, Kerr has been lambasting Kelly and the centre in what appears to be sordid witchhunt.

It all began when Kelly turned down an approach from Israeli academic Dan Avnon to be a contact person on an application for a Sir Zelman Cowen Fellowship.

Kelly emailed Avnon to explain why: “I and the Centre have nothing against you personally, and your research sounds interesting and worthwhile.

“But we support the boycott campaign against Israel, and that includes the call for an academic boycott of Israeli universities.”

Setting aside the likelihood that Avnon’s application to the centre was a probable set-up, Avnon and his Zionist colleagues commenced a hate campaign against Kelly by courtesy of Kerr and The Australian.

The story became more interesting when Kerr took to Facebook to pursue his witchhunt. When Higher Education Minister Chris Evans, the Labor Leader in the Senate, refused to buy into the creepy controversy, Kerr turned on him with a vengeance:

“Here’s a real story. The Government Leader in the Senate has refused to back government position on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Read in to get the details of Senator Chris Evans’ gutlessness/incompetence/anti-Semitism”.

The Cambridge International Dictionary of English defines Anti-Semitism as “the strong dislike or cruel and unfair treatment of Jewish people”.

Following two critical comments by Jews, Kerr removed the comments from Facebook but the damage had been done.

The moral of this story? Rupert Murdoch’s Australian newspaper is a disgrace. It pollutes the national life, bullies its opponents and its bereft of the common courtesy of fairness.

DASTYARI’S DELUSIONS

The dwindling band of folk who still buy The Sydney Morning Herald fell off the sofa when they read this headline: “Labor Party defies gloom as membership soars”. (SMH, December 8, 2012).

It quotes NSW ALP general secretary Sam Dastyari as claiming membership has “soared” to 16,000 compared to the all-time low of 12,000 at the 2011 state election.

Who does Dastyari think he is kidding? Sean Nicholls, state political editor of the Herald, for one.

Nicholls and his colleague Anne Davies, a former state political editor, are media mouthpieces for Dastyari, recycling his shallow utterances as hot gospel.

Dastyari appears to be using the media to circulate his CV because time is running out for him in Sussex Street.

There is a federal election next year and NSW is a disaster zone. Cabinet ministers and MPs from NSW are dreading the prospect of Dastyari at the helm of their re-election campaign.

Let’s not forget he ran the ALP’s campaign at the 2010 state election and managed to produce the worst result in 100 years.

Federal ministers facing the chopping block in 2013 include Chris Bowen (McMahon), Tony Burke (Watson), Jason Clare (Blaxland) and David Bradbury (Lindsay) along with a swag of other seats such as Robertson, Richmond and Page.

Dastyari’s sudden disclosure that he wants to shift party HQ from Sussex Street to Parramatta is designed to give him media credibility as a change agent and plead for some (undeserved) voter-credibility in the ALP wastelands of western Sydney.

But a late change of address won’t save Labor from voters who’ve simply given up listening to snake oil salesmen. The Herald may believe Dastyari’s arrant nonsense, voters won’t.

YOU WERE WARNED

On April 23, 2012, I wrote: “Call me a cynical old journo but I’m taking an unusually deep interest in the Peter Slipper affair and its treatment in Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd tabloids. Slippergate has Tony Abbott written all over it.”

Now read the Federal Court judgment by Justice Steven Rares in which he found the case was an “abuse of process” which was carried out for the “purpose of causing significant public, reputational and political damage to Mr Slipper”.

And if Abbott and his co-conspirators could have criminalised Slipper and forced his resignation from parliament they believed they had the numbers to defeat Julia Gillard in a confidence vote, force an election and storm into office.

Why was this vulnerable woman left in sole charge at 5:30am? Working away home and her children? What cheapskate economics led to this devout Catholic being in charge of the hospital switchboard? She went back to her lodgings and had no one to talk to. She was cheap labour to the hospital. She was alone in the big city with no one to calm her self condemnatory feelings. I weep for her agony and her decision to end her life. Shame on her employer.